Scripsit Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>
> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> > There is nothing in the phrase "a Debian-specific" licence that
> > implies that anything has been signed by Debian (whatever that means).
> Um. While true, that has the wrong causality.
> That Debian has a license only because it has somehow signed something
> *does* imply that it's a Debian-specific license.
Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. I was reacting to what I
thought was a general statement that Debian-specific licenses are not
good enough for non-free.
If you are just saying that the particular license that started the
thread is not good enough for non-free, I completely agree. But I
don't think that has much to do with its being "specific to Debian".
> > An unilateral declaration saying "I hereby allow my program Foomatic
> > to be distributed in source and binary from by all Debian mirrors" is
> > a Debian-specific license.
> That would make me very nervous, as a mirror operator. But OK.
I think mirror operators *should* be nervous if they mirror non-free
in any other context than a full mirror of the Debian archive.
Historically, the scrutiny we have applied to non-free licenses has
not included not thought about that situation, so partial mirror
operators are essentially on their own with respect to non-free.
--
Henning Makholm "However, the fact that the utterance by
Epimenides of that false sentence could imply the
existence of some Cretan who is not a liar is rather unsettling."